The present invention relates to a device for cooking culinary preparations. It also relates to an automated machine for preparing culinary preparations in an automated manner using such a device, a simultaneous and individualized method for cooking several culinary preparations using such a device, and the utilization of the present device for cooking pizzas.
The present invention is situated within the field of catering—fast-food, traditional or semi-industrial—and more particularly the field of oven cooking devices.
In a known manner, ovens comprising several cooking sites make it possible to cook several culinary preparations simultaneously. These can be for example pizza ovens. In their simplest form, these ovens comprise a cooking chamber, a heat source, optionally a temperature sensor, and regulation means making it possible to regulate the (average) temperature and/or the thermal power within the cooking chamber. The drawback of such ovens is that they do not allow the cooking temperature to be controlled locally at the level of each culinary preparation loaded in the cooking chamber.
Now, the temperature within the cooking chamber may be uneven, according to the type of heat source used and its positioning inside said cooking chamber, which may result in a temperature and/or a heating duration that is/are unsuitable for certain preparations, and/or a poor quality of cooking. Furthermore, the cooking time and temperature and/or power parameters may differ from one culinary preparation to another, depending on the ingredients to be cooked, distribution thereof at the surface and/or inside the culinary preparation and/or the mass and the volume of the preparation. Ovens having a single cooking chamber and/or a single heat source thus do not allow individualized cooking of the different preparations to be carried out.
Also, document WO 2008/098341 A1 is known, which describes a pizza oven comprising a cooking chamber, a main heat source (wood firebox) making it possible to bring the cooking chamber up to the desired temperature, a rotary hearth comprising several cooking sites and, in a particular embodiment, heating means situated on the rotary hearth, below each cooking site. The technical problem that this oven seeks to resolve is to reduce uneven temperatures inside the cooking chamber. This unevenness is associated specifically with the use of a main heat source situated in the centre of said cooking chamber and creating a radial temperature gradient therein. The temperature unevenness (of the rotary hearth) is also associated with the presence or absence of pizzas on the cooking sites. Use of the secondary heating means situated over the rotary hearth, combined with the main heat source, for heating the entire cooking chamber thus allow improved control of unevenness of temperature inside the cooking chamber.
However, this oven is not arranged to control the individual temperature of each cooking site using the heating means situated on the rotary hearth. At most, for an even cooking temperature inside the cooking chamber, and thus identical over each cooking site, the cooking time of each pizza situated on the cooking sites is adapted as a function of the recipes.
Thus the solution implemented in this document does not allow pizzas to be cooked simultaneously at temperatures and for durations that differ from one to another.
Nor does the pizza oven described allow optimum cooking of pizzas constituted by frozen ingredients placed on chilled dough.
In fact, in this particular case, the energy inputs to be supplied are very different for optimum cooking of both the dough and the ingredients: the chilled dough requires a constant cooking temperature, preferentially comprised between 250 and 330° C. and a cooking time varying between 2 and 6 minutes according to the cooking temperature in order to avoid burning the surface layers of said chilled dough while allowing the deeper layers to cook and rise during cooking; on the other hand, the frozen ingredients placed on the surface of the sheeted chilled dough require cooking in three successive steps: during a first step, the ingredients are firstly defrosted, then, during a second step, the water released during the first step is evaporated, and finally the ingredients are cooked in the course of a third step.
Document US 2014/0311355 A1 is also known, which describes an oven for cooking pizzas in a cooking chamber comprising a main heat source situated in the centre of the cooking chamber and around which turns a cooking plate on which pizzas are loaded. The main heat source described is a burner, onto the flame of which the cooking chamber is open, making it possible to obtain a particular cooking effect on the pizzas loaded therein, comparable to that of a grill. A screen is placed in proximity to said flame in order to limit the grill effect to a delimited sub-region inside the cooking chamber.
Furthermore, independent secondary heat sources are placed below the cooking plate in order to compensate for the unevenness of temperature inside the chamber, in particular associated with the specific geometry of the main heat source. The secondary heat sources are not driven rotatably about the main heat source. This oven thus makes it possible to cook several pizzas simultaneously according to a certain regime established inside the oven, which is identical for all the pizzas loaded in the oven. This oven does not allow said pizzas loaded in the oven to be cooked according to different simultaneous cooking cycles (duration, temperature).
The purpose of the present invention is to solve the aforementioned problems at least partially and also to lead to further advantages.
A further purpose of the invention is to facilitate the simultaneous cooking of several culinary preparations while reducing oversight by a cook.
A further purpose of the present invention is to be able to cook several culinary preparations simultaneously in an individualized manner in one and the same cooking chamber.
A further purpose of the invention is to be able to control more accurately the thermal power brought to bear on each culinary preparation during cooking.
A further purpose of the present invention is to be able to cook a culinary preparation composed of frozen and refrigerated ingredients using one and the same device and in the course of one and the same cooking procedure.